Who is doing it better, Canada with RTD or China with the social credit score?
So far China seems to be ahead because they have a phone app that lets users know there is a low credit looser nearby. If you hang out too near them you might get infected and be squashed like a bug too.
The US seems to be falling behind. We have all this data on everyone, and the public and private sector data is fused, but it's only Wall Street and law enforcement seem to use it as a permanent non-alterable black mark: no-fly and insane interest rates respectively. When Canada is ahead of the US as a surveillance state it's pathetic.
Please, does anyone think a $5.7 million fine has any significant deterrent effect? It's pocket change.
Every time some douche bag company screws up and gets caught the authorities always give them a slap on the wrist and pretend it has an impact. At least once a month I hear about some "huge" penalty, monetary or otherwise, and it's a bad joke. Next time the fine will be $5.8 million and it will still be "record breaking".
Over 99% of the time the top of the corporate ladder feels no pain. They just fire some lower level workers and charge more and sail right on. Can you say Wells Fargo?
Does anybody fall for this anymore, or do we all accept it as a meaningless ritual and ignore it? Why do they even pretend?
As far as clearing out other objects in it's orbit, Earth is making things worse: it's adding more space junk to it's orbit and the orbits of other planets and non-planetary objects.
We are currently the litterbugs of the Solar System.
I recommend platinum coated blades; they give a better shave and last longer. The other strategy is to buy 6 or more months of inexpensive blades and use a new one every time. I haven't tried that, but YMMV.
Also stop using canned shaving cream, get a good quality badger hair brush with a stand and cake shaving soap. The brush will last forever and cost per shave of soap is pennies. You can find all sorts of interesting scents as well.
The only time I got a better shave was in a barber shop where they put warm towels on your face and use a straight razor. One trick is to leave the wet soap on your face while you brush your teeth and then shave. The extra soap time helps soften your beard (or whatever is being shaved.)
This question must be considered in terms of the current captive market.
On the desktop Microsoft is the entrenched monopoly. On smartphones there is a duopoly between Android/Google and IOS/Apple. It is completely feasible for Google or Apple to try to grab some of Microsoft's desktop market share with their respective phone centric OS. Google is already on this path with the Chromebook and Apple with the iPad line.
The move to challenge Widows with another platform is a business decision on the part of Google or Apple. It's not about an unmet demand on the part of users. It's a case of three massive rivals placing bets on the future. Concepts like "popularity" or "ease of use" are not primary movers. Marketing, market share, and risk/reward are the basic factors, not any desire on the part of the public.
Amazon doesn't pay adequate taxes anywhere in the world. That's true for all the high tech mega-corps. Talking only about jobs and ignoring the civic funding issue is libertarian propaganda.
Saying that tax breaks are not a direct subsidy is a flat out lie. It this circumstance it's a bribe and for Amazon it's a "head I win tails you loose" proposition. It's just like building sport stadiums: a scam to loot the public treasury for private profit. (Just ask St. Louis or San Diego about the Rams and Chargers moving to LA.)
If you don't think that tax breaks are a subsidy then why not tax religion? Just suggest it. I dare you. Tax breaks are money in the pocket. Besides being declared as an agent of the devil by "legitimate" religious figures some nut job will do a drive by and put a bullet into your house or perhaps toss a Molotov cocktail in your direction.
Everyone who profits from sucking off the public teat is the same: they think their free ride is a natural law of the universe and any other option is a perversion of the natural order. Libertarians are just another set of blood sucking scamsters.
Exactly. It's not a level playing field, it's biased in favor of corporations. Because Politics!
It's not about the best tool or what is most cost effective, it's about lobbyist and the revolving door. When managers don't even consider the open source option they know a job may be waiting for them when they leave government service. That's how the Military/Industrial complex works. As for lobbyists, if there is any talk about open source it's certain that the campaign contribution tap will open wide.
As for all the whining "what about support!!!", that why it's call OPEN SOURCE. There's nothing stopping the government from either having in house support staff or paying a vendor to provide support. Does anyone think that paying Oracle or IBM rates for support is less expensive then going to the open market? Paying for bloated corporate costs is a form of hidden taxation that skips the middle man and put tax dollars directly in the pocket of Larry Ellison so he can buy his next generation billionaire yacht.
A global catastrophe because of misuse of GMOs in in the cards unless there are some dramatic changes.
The current nightmare scenario: there is a gene hack that makes photosynthesis more efficient. (BTW, a current photosynthesis wastes almost as many photons as it uses, and there is now work going on to "fix" this problem. It's happening now.) Land plants with improved yields go into mass use. Meanwhile, previously unknown virus activity moves the new energy pathways into algae and there is a world wide tropical water algae bloom. So much oxygen is consumed that a crash of all tropical ocean life occurs. Within a few years atmospheric oxygen levels drop and everything else starts to die.
Does it make any difference who the corrupt actor is in this case? Perhaps a company beholding to the Chinese state is worse then a corrupt US company in cahoots with the government/industrial complex, but you are screwed either way. Put another way, you could get hit by a speeding truck on the sidewalk or be shot by a stay bullet in your living room. Either way you're dead meat.
For the first time in a decade, Corporate America is steering more money into stock buybacks than investing in the future.
S&P 500 companies rewarded shareholders with $384 billion worth of buybacks during the first half of 2018, according to a Goldman Sachs report published Friday. That big bonanza for Wall Street is up 48% from last year and reflects spiking profitability thanks to corporate tax cuts and the strong US economy.
But that doesn't mean companies aren't spending on job-creating investments, like new equipment, research projects and factories. Business spending is up 19% — it's just that buybacks are growing much faster.
In fact, Goldman Sachs said that buybacks are garnering the largest share of cash spending by S&P 500 firms. It's a milestone because capital spending had represented the single largest use of cash by corporations in 19 of the past 20 years.
And the trend may not be done yet. Goldman Sachs predicted that share buyback authorizations among all US companies in all of 2018 will surpass $1 trillion for the first time ever.
Apple (AAPL) alone spent a whopping $45 billion on buybacks during the first half of 2018, triple what it did during the same time period last year, the firm said. That included a record-shattering sum during the first quarter.
Amgen (AMGN), Cisco (CSCO), AbbVie (ABBV) and Oracle (ORCL) have also showered investors with big boosts to their buyback programs.
...
Even though CEOs continue to green light vast buybacks, they have been quietly taking a different approach with their own money. Corporate insiders sold $10.3 billion of shares in August, the most since November 2017, according to research firm TrimTabs.
The CEO class is lining their own pockets with tax cut profits. Their personal stock grants have multiplication factors leveraging stock price increases. They have raised their compensation by factors over 100%, perhaps as high as 500%.
The do this because they think they are monopolies. To some extent they are right. It shows there is very little competition in the cable/satellite market.
It's just another example of the lack of a "free market" in the US. Our economic life is dominated by entrenched special interests.
Additionally the USPS is required by federal law to provide service to everyone in the United States. The can't withhold service except for specific reasons, such as dog attacks. UPS/Fedex/etc have no requirements to provide service to any location. If you're too far off the beaten track they can ignore you or charge as much as they want. It's not a level playing field.
The lowest cost for a letter from the USPS is under $.50 while UPS/Fedex is over $1.00.
You're most likely a Conservative/Libertard. You have no legitimate criticism, you just trash the government because you can. You hate it when the government works. Hating the government is a stand in for hating the US. You're anti-American.
Someone described superposition to him as a state where something could be true and false at the same time. He instantly applied this to himself and knew it would fix a bunch of his problems.
1) No one could call him a liar because there is no such thing as true or false.
2) No one could say he contradicted himself.
3) He didn't have to 'walk back' anything he said.
4) He could spout incomprehensible nonsense and have everyone except it.
Unfortunately for everybody else on the planet, he's incapable of understanding that superpositions collapse and non-quantum reality is the result. That means things are true or false, contradictions need to be resolved, when you make unsupportable assertions people call you out, and nonsense has no meaning.
That ominous sound you're starting to hear is the sound of the real world crashing in on TrumpWorld's quantum fantasy and starting to crush him and all the rest of up flat.
The President is using his personal non-secure phone to talk about government business every fucking day! He has done this since he took the oath of office. He is endangering his own life and the security of the country by doing so.
Where is your outrage over that?
Stop lying. You are pretending to be "Fair and Balanced", but what you are truly doing is spewing right wing disinformation.
If being a hypocrite was a toxin you would be dead and the region around your body would be treated like a radioactive disaster zone.
Slashdot Mirror
Unlike Facebook, which is effectively mandatory in some circumstances.
So far China seems to be ahead because they have a phone app that lets users know there is a low credit looser nearby. If you hang out too near them you might get infected and be squashed like a bug too.
The US seems to be falling behind. We have all this data on everyone, and the public and private sector data is fused, but it's only Wall Street and law enforcement seem to use it as a permanent non-alterable black mark: no-fly and insane interest rates respectively. When Canada is ahead of the US as a surveillance state it's pathetic.
Every time some douche bag company screws up and gets caught the authorities always give them a slap on the wrist and pretend it has an impact. At least once a month I hear about some "huge" penalty, monetary or otherwise, and it's a bad joke. Next time the fine will be $5.8 million and it will still be "record breaking".
Over 99% of the time the top of the corporate ladder feels no pain. They just fire some lower level workers and charge more and sail right on. Can you say Wells Fargo?
Does anybody fall for this anymore, or do we all accept it as a meaningless ritual and ignore it? Why do they even pretend?
It's interesting that this is surfacing just after a big chunk of investment came in from China.
This validates my opinion of corporate behavior in the US: if you are a CxO of a major corporation you are already a criminal.
In general large scale corporate capitalism is a criminal enterprise.
We are currently the litterbugs of the Solar System.
I consider Kansas to be obscene and want to censor it from my internet experience.
Also stop using canned shaving cream, get a good quality badger hair brush with a stand and cake shaving soap. The brush will last forever and cost per shave of soap is pennies. You can find all sorts of interesting scents as well.
The only time I got a better shave was in a barber shop where they put warm towels on your face and use a straight razor. One trick is to leave the wet soap on your face while you brush your teeth and then shave. The extra soap time helps soften your beard (or whatever is being shaved.)
On the desktop Microsoft is the entrenched monopoly. On smartphones there is a duopoly between Android/Google and IOS/Apple. It is completely feasible for Google or Apple to try to grab some of Microsoft's desktop market share with their respective phone centric OS. Google is already on this path with the Chromebook and Apple with the iPad line.
The move to challenge Widows with another platform is a business decision on the part of Google or Apple. It's not about an unmet demand on the part of users. It's a case of three massive rivals placing bets on the future. Concepts like "popularity" or "ease of use" are not primary movers. Marketing, market share, and risk/reward are the basic factors, not any desire on the part of the public.
Saying that tax breaks are not a direct subsidy is a flat out lie. It this circumstance it's a bribe and for Amazon it's a "head I win tails you loose" proposition. It's just like building sport stadiums: a scam to loot the public treasury for private profit. (Just ask St. Louis or San Diego about the Rams and Chargers moving to LA.)
If you don't think that tax breaks are a subsidy then why not tax religion? Just suggest it. I dare you. Tax breaks are money in the pocket. Besides being declared as an agent of the devil by "legitimate" religious figures some nut job will do a drive by and put a bullet into your house or perhaps toss a Molotov cocktail in your direction.
Everyone who profits from sucking off the public teat is the same: they think their free ride is a natural law of the universe and any other option is a perversion of the natural order. Libertarians are just another set of blood sucking scamsters.
It's not about the best tool or what is most cost effective, it's about lobbyist and the revolving door. When managers don't even consider the open source option they know a job may be waiting for them when they leave government service. That's how the Military/Industrial complex works. As for lobbyists, if there is any talk about open source it's certain that the campaign contribution tap will open wide.
As for all the whining "what about support!!!", that why it's call OPEN SOURCE. There's nothing stopping the government from either having in house support staff or paying a vendor to provide support. Does anyone think that paying Oracle or IBM rates for support is less expensive then going to the open market? Paying for bloated corporate costs is a form of hidden taxation that skips the middle man and put tax dollars directly in the pocket of Larry Ellison so he can buy his next generation billionaire yacht.
If you believe that then why do you bother to post on Slashdot? It's not that much different here...
In the real world the US government is the agent of big business and cartels, not the other way around.
Wow, where do you live? How did you move to a universe without JavaScript?
If you poke something, it must be BASIC.
The current nightmare scenario: there is a gene hack that makes photosynthesis more efficient. (BTW, a current photosynthesis wastes almost as many photons as it uses, and there is now work going on to "fix" this problem. It's happening now.) Land plants with improved yields go into mass use. Meanwhile, previously unknown virus activity moves the new energy pathways into algae and there is a world wide tropical water algae bloom. So much oxygen is consumed that a crash of all tropical ocean life occurs. Within a few years atmospheric oxygen levels drop and everything else starts to die.
The End.
Does it make any difference who the corrupt actor is in this case? Perhaps a company beholding to the Chinese state is worse then a corrupt US company in cahoots with the government/industrial complex, but you are screwed either way. Put another way, you could get hit by a speeding truck on the sidewalk or be shot by a stay bullet in your living room. Either way you're dead meat.
The CEO class is lining their own pockets with tax cut profits. Their personal stock grants have multiplication factors leveraging stock price increases. They have raised their compensation by factors over 100%, perhaps as high as 500%.
It's just another example of the lack of a "free market" in the US. Our economic life is dominated by entrenched special interests.
The lowest cost for a letter from the USPS is under $.50 while UPS/Fedex is over $1.00.
You're most likely a Conservative/Libertard. You have no legitimate criticism, you just trash the government because you can. You hate it when the government works. Hating the government is a stand in for hating the US. You're anti-American.
Trump's speach writer is an Anonymouse Cowherd.
1) No one could call him a liar because there is no such thing as true or false.
2) No one could say he contradicted himself.
3) He didn't have to 'walk back' anything he said.
4) He could spout incomprehensible nonsense and have everyone except it.
Unfortunately for everybody else on the planet, he's incapable of understanding that superpositions collapse and non-quantum reality is the result. That means things are true or false, contradictions need to be resolved, when you make unsupportable assertions people call you out, and nonsense has no meaning.
That ominous sound you're starting to hear is the sound of the real world crashing in on TrumpWorld's quantum fantasy and starting to crush him and all the rest of up flat.
They both want unlimited power.
Where is your outrage over that?
Stop lying. You are pretending to be "Fair and Balanced", but what you are truly doing is spewing right wing disinformation.
If being a hypocrite was a toxin you would be dead and the region around your body would be treated like a radioactive disaster zone.
With the BFR it would just take one launch.